President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden.

According to disclosure forms, Biden made a cool $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he’ll now make $231,900 per year.

Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little bump, as their annual salary will go from $174,000 to 174,900. Leadership in Congress, including the speaker of the House, will likewise get an increase.

“A new executive order has been issued providing for a new pay schedule beginning ‘on the first day of the first applicable pay period beginning after March 27, 2013,'” reports FedSmith.com. “The pay raise will generally be about 1/2 of 1%.”

Jeryl Bier points to an example of the pay increase for average government executives:

“Not much of an increase, but an increase all the same,” Bier notes.

And the timing isn’t great either: Just as President Obama and Congress try to avert going over the “fiscal cliff,” he doles out pay increases to federal workers.

UPDATE: According to a senior Republican congressional aide who has reviewed the executive order and consulted with the Congressional Budget Office, Obama’s pay raise will cost $11 billion. “The CBO told us that the President’s pay raise for federal workers will cost $11 billion over ten years,” says the aide.

The aide explains, “On the cost-estimate, CBO says the (discretionary) cost of the .5% pay-hike the President is calling for in the Exec Order – relative to a freeze – is about $500m in FY 2013 and $11 billion over the ten years from FY 13 – FY 22. The reason why the FY ’13 savings is only $500 million is because the pay hike as proposed by the President’s Exec Order would not go into effect until April 1st, 2013 – when the current CR expires. So it only covers half the fiscal year. The annualized cost of the pay hike is about $1 billion/year.”

It’s regularly been pointed out that the average compensation – that includes pay and benefits – for federal workers is now double the private sector average. Defenders of federal employees have routinely insisted that this is an unfair comparison. Well, Andrew Biggs, the former Social Security Administration deputy commissioner for policy and American Enterprise Insititute Scholar, points to this astonishing fact:

The average federal government employee receives a salary of around $75,000 per year. With present and future fringe benefits equal to about 76 percent of salaries, that makes for total annual compensation of around $133,000. How does this match up to the private sector?

…………..

CNN Money has a nice survey of the 25 highest paying companies in the country, outlining the average total compensation per employee in each one. According to CNN, the closest match to federal employment is Microsoft, whose average employee compensation is 133,023 per year, making it the 17th highest paying company in the country.

So there you have it. Federal workers are paid as much as one of America’s most prestigious and highest paying employers.